There aren’t too many Elizabethan Theme Parks left in the Diocese of Sydney - possibly just a couple, and perhaps even one or two of the medieval variety.

Most disappeared through lack of patronage. Many, through the foresight of management, morphed into more relevant expressions of culture.

But here’s my concern. Does the spirit of the Elizabethan Theme Park live in most, if not all, of us?

What was it about the royal wedding, just over a year ago, that had us drooling in front of our TV’s?

Now I could play the ‘obscene waste of money’ card, but I won’t. I’m sure there’ll be a rebuttal in the form of the revenue that all but revived the ailing British economy, crippled, like many others, by the GFC only a couple of years earlier.

Or I could play the ‘amusing ourselves into brain atrophy’ card, but I won’t play that one either. My predisposition for the Dragons V Broncos game that night could be just another version of the same aversion.

But what relevance do these two English upper middle class self-indulged pampered nice people play in the issues that confront Australians or the rest of the world?

Paparazzi pictures of the honeymoon couple cuddling cute Kenyan kids, while they are enjoying their seven star luxury holiday somewhere beyond a Serengeti sunset, don’t do anything to soften my views either.

But please don’t conclude that I don’t appreciate the value or the legacy of Elizabethan England, series I or 2.

In fact, I’m all for some of the English celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the reign of the very benign and beautiful Queen Elizabeth. She was, and is, a class act and we should give God thanks that she carried herself with such dignity in the face of all sorts of family fiascos.

And please don’t think that I am ‘a’ or ‘anti’ history either. Two of my faith heroes were great ones of history. And they were great trailblazers in challenging the historical theme park preoccupations of their day.

William Tyndale gave his life battling belligerent beurocracy and corrupt churchman who had a vested interest in maintaining a medieval theme park mindset.

His passion for the salvation of souls and helping people in poverty possessed his every breath.

There was no nostalgia for a childhood that held people in ignorance of the gospel. No longing for a homeland that was bereft of the scriptures in the language of the ploughboy. Not even a bit of sentimentalism for the highly stratified class structure that could have seen him sipping cocktails with the upper class and prattling on about the latest trends in theology and the latest gossip from the palace with other prelates. His passion for people transcended time-bound cultures.

So he preached the dangerous gospel of justification by faith on Sunday. He painstakingly translated the scriptures that taught the seditious gospel of justification by faith on Tuesday through to Friday. And what of his Monday and Saturday?

He indulged his ‘pastime’ of patiently seeking out genuine cases of vulnerable people in whatever European city he was hiding in as a fugitive. He scoured the back alleys, under-bridges and riverbanks for the destitute, to feed them from his modest allowance, and tell them about the one who said, “I am the Bread of Life.”

His was the very contemporary Christianity that John Stott came to champion in the latter half of the twentieth century. Visit All Souls Langham Place in the very heart of London and you will find no evidence that it was ever an Elizabethan theme park.  Stott’s passion, as with Tyndale’s, was for a truly biblical, contextual and contemporary Christianity.

But Stott isn’t the second hero of history I want to mention. He is far too contemporary than that. A second William by the name of Wilberforce takes that honour. To be sure, he was post-Elizabethan, almost Victorian, but lived in a Britain that bragged the Elizabethan legacy from Buckingham Palace to Botany Bay.

Wilberforce, however, would settle for none of the post Elizabethan England foreign policy that both spawned slavery and was silent to its sinfulness.

His thirty tireless years challenging English injustice came at a price but bought and brought reform. And Wilberforce would have nothing to do with the social, cultural, respectable, comfortable, nominal post-Elizabethan/pre-Victorian Christianity of the English upper class. Like Tyndale he had a fire in his belly for justice and for the gospel of justification by faith alone.

We know of his social work and hard-won reforms. What is less known about Wilberforce is that he wrote an evangelistic book, which was as successful in his day as Stott’s Basic Christianity, or any other evangelistic book, in the last fifty years.

Real Christianity by William Wilberforce was translated into six languages and reprinted six times during his lifetime. It was translated and reprinted as recently as 1978.

These two William’s, best known for very different work, longed for the salvation of souls and for a society that protected homeless, neglected and exploited people.

No time for nostalgia. No patronising or perpetuating Elizabethan/Victorian theme parks. No meddling with medieval machinations.

Rather, they had hearts that pulsated with very biblical, very human, very contemporary and very eternal priorities.